


Don't Ask, Don't Tell

by dashakay



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003) RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:17:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashakay/pseuds/dashakay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Over the years, she's rarely exercised her privilege. Maybe she's truly a monogamist at heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Ask, Don't Tell

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to icedteainthebag for beta and pervy inspiration.

She and her husband came up with "don't ask, don't tell" long before Bill Clinton ever dreamed it up.

*

She no longer remembers how the conversation started or where they were while they had it. She does remember it was night and they were drinking red wine. Maybe they were at home, their cramped first apartment on the Upper West Side.

She'd just returned from three months on the road with a play. Her husband was hitting the road himself in a week or so. In the middle of all this she'd be flying to L.A. for a huddle with her agent and to read for some things, and then she was off to London for her best friend's West End debut. Six days with her husband in ten weeks.

No wonder it seemed as if ninety percent of two-actor marriages failed.

"This isn't working," she remembers her husband saying.

She'd nodded her head.

"We're human," he'd said, pouring more wine. "There's got to be a better way."

*

Over the years, she's rarely exercised her privilege. Maybe she's truly a monogamist at heart.

She has no idea how often her husband has. Don't ask, don't tell. She's better off not knowing.

*

She goes up to Vancouver to shoot the science fiction thing. It's not exactly her cup of tea, but the script is interesting and well-written and there's private school tuition to pay. She's an actress past fifty in a Paris Hilton world.

The cast is mostly young unknowns and Canadian character actors. Eddie is the only other semi-marquee name. He arrives with his wife in tow. She's barely half his age, all adoring eyes, calling her husband "Papí." He's a nice guy, though, and as realistic about his current career prospects as she is, but determined not to phone in his performance, either. She likes that about him.

Soon enough, she's home and immersed in orthodontist appointments and gymnastics lessons, yoga classes and auditions. There's some rumbling about _Battlestar Galactica_ becoming a series, but she's not holding her breath. This is the SciFi Channel, after all.

*

She hasn't told many of her friends about her unique marital arrangement. Inevitably, though, if she tells someone, she's immediately asked if she slept with Kevin Costner.

Each time she rolls her eyes, laughs and says no way. Not her type at all. Nice enough guy for sure, wrote a great screenplay, did a hell of a job directing, but there was no chemistry whatsoever. "What you saw on the screen was _acting_," she always says.

The second unit director, on the other hand, he was another story entirely.

*

Back up to Vancouver she goes, this time to shoot thirteen episodes. Almost five months. She rents a condo with a partial water view and tries to make it feel something like home with a suitcase full of bric-a-brac from the Los Angeles house. Her husband promises to visit a couple of times with the kids and she plans to fly down when the shooting schedule permits.

She immerses herself in the scripts, in the character. She finds that she's falling for Laura Roslin in the way she sometimes does when a character is especially well-written. She creates a back story for Laura, more elaborate than the series bible, even. She stays up late at night, scribbling Laura's story in her journal. Laura is lonely, she decides. Her life on Caprica had become entirely public, except for her secret life with President Adar. In a strange way, Laura is secretly relieved that world has ended. She can start fresh.

*

It's a friendly cast, all youthful energy and can-do attitude. Alessandro massages her aching neck between takes. Katee and Tricia giggle like schoolgirls in algebra class. Grace comes to her one day, her voice shaking with nerves, and asks her if they could possibly run lines during a break. The younger members of the cast frequently go out at night and lay waste to the city of Vancouver. Many mornings she laughs over stories about how someone ended up dancing on a bar the night before.

*

The rules are simple. Easy to understand.

1\. Never when we're in the same city.

2\. Don't get too involved. Don't fall in love.

3\. Our marriage is the central relationship. Always.

4\. Don't ask questions, don't tell tales.

*

Eddie has the softest hands she's ever felt on a man, smooth as a washed silk blouse. She manages to tease out of him that he gets a manicure every two weeks and a pedicure once a month. She accuses him of watching _Queer Eye for the Straight Guy_ one time too many. She starts calling him Admiral Manicure when he gets too big for his britches.

His wife isn't in Vancouver, she notes.

*

She dances with him in the eleventh episode, take after take on an overly warm soundstage crowded with extras. The makeup artist has to mop them off and powder them down between takes.

Despite all the sweating, Eddie smells good, like expensive cologne and wool. She teases him that he has more beauty products in his dressing room than she does. He tells her that she doesn't need any beauty products. The director calls action and they whirl together under the lights.

*

He's not at all her type, Eddie. She likes them tall and slender; tennis player bodies. Eddie is shortish and squat, with a considerable belly. "My wife fries _everything_," he says once. When he smiles, his teeth stick out. His skin is as rutted as the road to her parents' summer cottage in the Adirondacks. She can only imagine the names he was called in adolescence.

He's not at all her type.

*

_Laura is falling in love_, she writes in her journal. _She doesn't even know it herself, not yet. She has so many defenses in place. She cannot abide getting hurt again. And she's afraid to love Adama. They disagree on just about everything. He doesn't believe she's a prophetic leader. He thinks she's lost her mind, gone mad with power. But she's falling in love all the same. _

*

She dreams one night that she's in his trailer, sprawled out naked on the cushions of the sofa. Her legs are spread shamelessly wide as he strokes her clit with purpose. "That's it," he growls. "Come for me, Mary. Come for me."

She wakes, shaking, in the darkness of the bedroom that isn't quite hers. Truly, she's lost her mind. Eddie. Please. _As if_. It's been much too long since she's had sex. Her husband has only managed to visit twice. The class he's teaching at USC is taking up more of his time than he'd expected. Their daughter has swim meets almost every weekend. No time.

Even so, she settles back into the pillows, her mind floating back to the dream. Her fingers slide between her legs and find her clit. Eddie's head between her legs, the coarse grain of his stubble on her soft flesh, tongue snaking out to lick her where she's wet and so ready for him. She squeezes her eyes shut as she comes, resisting the urge to call out his name.

The next day she can hardly look him in the eye. She starts giggling so hard the director almost has to shut the set down. "What's so funny?" Eddie asks. If you only knew, she thinks.

*

The first season wrap party. They all gather at a chichi pan-Asian restaurant, scrubbed and dressed in their best. Waiters circulate with trays of shrimp sate and hamachi rolls with cilantro pesto. Saketinis and champagne flow like the proverbial river.

Everyone seems to be in a strangely frantic and festive holiday mood, torn between being proud of the good work they've done and unsure if the show will get picked up for a second season. No one really knows if they'll all be together again. Bets are taken on who will end up dancing on the bar tonight. The odds are running in favor of Katee, who is knocking back shots as enthusiastically as Starbuck would, but Aaron ends up winning.

She's wearing a new red dress tonight, happy to be out of Laura's boxy little suits. The dress has spaghetti straps and is cut daringly low front and back. She feels like she has something to prove to the gaggle of twentysomething girls in the cast. Someday you'll be in your fifties, she thinks, and you'd better _pray_ you look as good as I do.

"Mmm, you look positively edible," James purrs in her ear as he glides past. She blushes.

*

Eddie is seated next to her at dinner, animatedly discussing some idea he has for a screenplay with Ron and David. She pushes the lemongrass lobster around her plate. She's probably had one too many glasses of wine, but she feels light and free. She feels like being the one who dances on the bar tonight.

A warm hand creeps onto her knee. She'd know that silk-soft hand anywhere. If she were fully in control of herself, she'd push the hand away with a disarming grin. Probably. But she doesn't push it away.

Eddie's hand wanders under the folds of her dress, travels to her inner thigh. She pretends to be interested in whatever Ron's currently pontificating about, but everything around her seems to tilt and spin as Eddie's strong fingers massage her thigh and dance along the edge of her lacy panties.

*

"Where?" she gasps. He has her pressed against the rough brick of the alleyway behind the restaurant. Her leg has wound its way around his waist and she can feel his insistent erection pressing into her.

They have to go somewhere else. And soon. Anyone could spot them at any second. And wouldn't the cast and crew rumormongers love _that_, to see the show's leads tipsily kissing and fondling each other in a dark Vancouver alley.

"Here's just fine," Eddie says, his voice half an octave deeper than normal. She feels strands of her hair getting caught on the brick wall as he kisses her, all soft lips and hard tongue. He tastes like sake and ginger. She wants him inside her now, right here, she doesn't care who sees.

Her hands clench and unclench into fists as he sinks to his knees right there on the dirty pavement, his head disappearing under the fabric of her dress. His breath his hot on her thighs, his fingers scrabbling to rip the panties off her. He's not going to do it here in this alley, she frantically thinks, but yes, he is. He spreads her wide open with his tongue, takes a long, loving lick as if she's a particularly delicious ice cream cone. She sways against the bricks, the wine and the three-inch heels making her sure she's going to collapse at any second.

"Have you lost your mind, Eddie?" she says, but he doesn't answer. He probably can't hear, anyhow, buried as he is in her pussy. She bends her knees to grind herself on his face, to pull him deeper onto her. She tastes blood in her mouth. She hadn't even realized she was biting her cheek to keep herself from crying out.

*

It's started to rain. They run across the parking lot, hand-in-hand, laughing like maniacs.

They've almost made it to the street when they spot a familiar figure. James, strolling to his car. "Why, hello, you two." One eyebrow rises.

She drops Eddie's hand. "Hi there," she says breathlessly, well aware that her hair is a tangled mess and half her red lipstick has migrated onto Eddie's cheek and neck.

James unlocks his car. "Enjoy your hiatus," he says, seeming to be suppressing a smirk.

They escape to the street corner. Eddie hails a cab while she attempts to make some sense of her hair. Once inside the safe confines of the taxi, she says, "That was just too close for comfort."

Eddie takes her hand and presses it onto his erection, straining the fabric of his trousers. "You need to learn to live a little, Mary."

She smiles, tracing one finger up and down the length of his cock.

*

Sometime in the middle of the night, she dares to ask him, "Do you and your wife have some kind of arrangement?" They're sprawled out in her big bed like starfish. She's half-on, half-off his body, her fingers painting filigree on his chest.

He chuckles. "Just the old-fashioned kind. She doesn't ask questions."

Sounds vaguely familiar. "And does she have the same freedom you do?"

"Hell, no." He snorts.

She mock-punches his shoulder. "You're a sexist pig, you know that?"

Eddie shrugs. "Just the way I was raised."

She sighs against his shoulder. "What _am_ I going to do with you?"

He's hard again. Eddie must be mainlining Viagra or Cialis. "You love it," he grunts as she squeezes his cock.

How can she possibly want him again? But she does, she does. She swings her leg over his body, takes him deep inside her. His hands firmly clasp her hips as she begins to ride him. Don't leave bruises, she thinks. I'm going home soon.

*

He leaves early the next morning. He has to pack and get on the plane to Los Angeles. She has a little more time; her flight isn't until the next day.

Her leg muscles are sore. She feels pleasantly hungover, her body well-used. Her skin feels especially electric, as if she might give off small shocks if touched.

She'll be glad to leave this condo. It never really felt like home. And now, just about every flat surface reminds her of last night. Did they really fuck on the dining table, her legs thrown over his shoulders as he drove into her again and again? Was that really her who got down on her knees in the shower, taking him in her mouth? Really? That couldn't have been her.

She's not even attracted to Eddie, for Christ's sake. How drunk _was_ she?

She sips at a cup of scalding instant coffee, wondering if she's somehow gotten herself confused with Laura Roslin. She does that sometimes, disappears so deeply into certain characters that she's unsure where she ends and the character begins.

It's a nice excuse.

She smiles as she steps out onto the balcony, catching a glimpse of the Pacific shining in the morning light. It reminds her of home. It _was_ her last night who got on her hands and knees for Eddie, who let him eat her out in an alley, who practically gave him a hand-job in a taxi. She's not going to hide behind four glasses of wine. She had sex with her costar last night. Multiple times. Four or five, depending on how you count. And she's not going to regret it.

Not much, anyhow.

*

She stares out the windows of the plane as it begins to make its descent to LAX. Somehow she feels like she's breaking one of the rules. Which one, she's not sure. Maybe an unwritten one.

She has his private number saved on her phone. She wonders if it would be safer if she deleted it.

Her husband meets her in baggage claim, throws his long arms around her in a welcoming hug. For one second, she frantically wonders if he can somehow smell Eddie on her skin. Ridiculous, she thinks, hugging her husband back. She's showered twice since then.

"I'm so glad to see you," he says, grinning.

She kisses his neck, breathing in his familiar smell. "You, too."

*

They hold a belated twentieth anniversary party at their house. Friends and family crowd around as they toast two decades together with champagne, toast their loved ones, toast their beautiful children.

A new friend corners her in the kitchen. "What's your secret?" Jane demands, just a little drunk. "Josh and I have only been married for four years and I'm just so ready to get out. Every night, I come home and there he is, the same old guy. I can't handle it."

She doesn't know Jane well enough to trust her with her secret. "Communication," she says to her. "The secret is communication." She smiles a secret smile.

Ironic, she thinks later as she's getting undressed. Communication, she told Jane, when the true secret to their twenty happy years is something else entirely.

She climbs in bed, where her husband is waiting for her. "Happy Anniversary," he says with a big smile.

"Mmm...Happy Anniversary to you, too." She kisses him.

Don't ask, don't tell.

END


End file.
